


Project Make Percival not Hate Himself

by UnabashedlyLoudNacho



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Short, Some Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 18:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10223981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnabashedlyLoudNacho/pseuds/UnabashedlyLoudNacho
Summary: A sequel to Scars. Percival wakes up and finds himself being cared for by a man he doesn't know. The man introduces himself as Newt Scamander and they form a tentative relationship around Percival's recovery from his time with Grindelwald.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to Scars - http://archiveofourown.org/works/9288278 
> 
> I am not a native English speaker so I do apologize for any grammar mistakes I might have made. I'm also aware that I tend to blend American-English and British-English together - I just don't notice it myself. And this isn't beta-ed.

The first thing that crossed Percival’s mind when he woke up was that he hadn’t had any nightmares, he hadn’t dreamt anything at all in fact. The second thing he noticed was that his face was completely numb. He lifted a shaky hand in order to touch his face.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a soft voice with a British accent. Percival’s eyes snapped open, his hand still hovering motionlessly above the blanket that covered him.

He was lying in his bed in his bedroom. The room looked no different from the way it usually did – four poster king sized bed, a couple of side tables, a large wardrobe to the side and a window with the curtains drawn shut. There was one difference however; a red, curly-haired man sat on a chair beside his bed, looking anywhere but at Percival and fidgeting. 

“I just mean, um…” he said. The vest he was wearing over his shirt was unbuttoned and Percival noticed stains on it that he was sure he didn’t want to know what were. His shirt sleeves had been folded up to his elbows. “I had to, you know, put a salve on the umm cuts on your face so they would stop, you know, bleeding.”

Percival stared at the strange man without comprehension, then he remembered what had happened.

He had seen his reflection in the mirror and gotten frightened. 

He had had what he assumed at the time was a brilliant idea. 

Then apparently he had passed out and this weird (beautiful) looking stranger had broken into his apartment and cared for him. Like that was okay. 

“Are the cuts..?” Percival’s voice was hoarse from disuse.

“Um, I closed them so they would stop bleeding… and umm I took the pain away with a pain-relieving potion, but uh…” the man kept fidgeting and staring at a point just over Percival’s shoulder. “I didn’t, you know, heal them… I assumed you umm did that… uhh…” 

“I did that on purpose, yes,” Percival said, deciding to put the man out of his misery. 

“Why…?” The man looked troubled. Percival felt angry and defensive at the question.

“Who are you?!” He hissed, glaring at the red head. “What are you doing here?” A terrifying thought crossed his mind. “Are you one of Grindelwald’s..?”

“Oh Merlin no!” The man exclaimed, he was so shocked that his eyes drifted to Percival’s for a few seconds before settling on the bedside table. “I, just, umm…”

“Please, just answer the questions,” when the sudden fright that Percival had felt at the possibility that this man had something to do with Grindelwald had left him he felt drained and tired and couldn’t stand listening to the Brit stammer and choke on his words.

“Right, um I’m Newt Scamander, magizoologist. I uh, met you… or well, Grindelwald when he was posing as you and um…” the man, Newt, drew in a deep breath and kept going. “When I heard you had been found and that you were well enough recovered to be let out of the hospital I wanted to meet you, the real you, and um, tell you, you know, no hard feelings?” The magizoologist ended his little speech as a question.

Percival sighed and resisted the urge to rub his face. “And so you decided to break into my apartment when I didn’t come to the door?” He asked, slightly amused despite his irritation. Seraphina Picquery, MACUSA’s president, had given him reports to read through and spoken with him at length about the things that had happened during the six months (six BLOODY months!) that he had been Grindelwald’s captive, so he vaguely remembered Scamander’s name from those. 

“Well, um,” Scamander seemed to blush and fidget even more than before, if that was even possible. “Pickett sensed that there was something wrong and started freaking out and wanted me to leave, because he thought we were in danger, and um, I convinced him to pick the locks to your apartment instead?”

Percival lifted an eyebrow, his locks were enchanted so that they were impossible to open with magic, they were also impossible to pick, or so he had thought. 

“And who the hell is this Pickett person?”

The look on Scamander’s face turned confused for a second, like he’d completely lost the track of the conversation, but then he practically jumped in his seat and started fumbling in his breast pocket. From the pocket he retrieved a green stick with leaves. Percival almost snapped at him but then he noticed the stick moving.

“What is that?” He asked incredulously.

“This is Pickett, he is a bowtruckle,” Scamander said, smiling awkwardly and looking down at the stick thing, which was making strange squeaking noises. “No Pickett, this Mr. Graves isn’t evil, this is the real one!” He said to the bowtruckle as if he expected it to understand.

“Pickett is very protective of me,” Scamander said apologetically to Percival. “Bowtruckles protect their home trees, and he has made me his designated home tree.”

“Right,” Percival said as if everything made perfect sense. 

Nothing did.

*

Percival tried to get Newt to leave (I’m perfectly fine Scamander, I don’t need a third cup of tea. I don’t even like tea!), but if Pickett had made Newt into his designated home tree Newt had made Percival into his own project. Project make Percival not hate himself.

When Percival refused to let Newt remove the scars from his face Newt made a bargain with him to at least make them a bit less visible, so that Percival could look at himself in the mirror without having a panic attack but still so his face wouldn’t look like a road-map of a very badly constructed city.

When Percival told Newt that he had no intention of going back to work at MACUSA because those bastards could fend for themselves just like Percival had been left to fend for himself for six months, Newt decided that was okay, but he still needed to do something other than sleep all day. So Percival found himself working alongside Newt in his case, feeding and tending to the magical creatures he had assembled throughout the years. 

When Percival woke up crying and screaming from a nightmare, trembling so bad that he couldn’t even go to the bathroom to relieve himself, Newt would come rushing into the room (he had made himself at home in Percival’s study) and would hum to him and pat him awkwardly on the back until Percival felt calm enough to go to the bathroom. Then Newt would sit with him until he fell asleep as if that was perfectly normal, and thus made Percival feel less frightened in the dark of the night.

When Percival refused to invite any of his family or friends (like he had any friends) over Newt made it a goal of his to have Percival befriend the Goldstein sisters, because Newt seemed to think that they were the nicest people on the planet. (“They might be nice, but I’m not nice, Scamander!” “If they can stand me they will be able to stand you”).

Before Percival even knew what was going on Newt had stayed with him for a couple of months and Percival couldn’t even imagine his life without him. 

Of course that was when Newt go a letter from an acquaintance from Iceland.

Iceland 

About an eight-legged horse.

Eight-legged

*

“So you’ll be leaving,” Percival said, trying to sound less sullen than he felt and failing miserably. They were in his study (Newt’s bedroom) and Newt was packing (throwing things carelessly into his case).

“Well, you know, there haven’t been eight-legged horses for, umm, just over thousand years,” Newt said, sounding apologetic but strangely excited as well.

Percival rubbed the largest scar on his face absentmindedly and tried to ignore the black hole in his stomach that was threatening to eat him up from the inside. Of course Newt would leave him, he was so horrible that people couldn’t tell the difference between him and the darkest wizard the world had seen for a long time.

Percival wanted to beg him not to go.

But that wouldn’t be fair.

Why should Newt be stuck with an (bitter, scarred, broken) ex-auror when he himself was so full of life and hope?

“I’ll be back,” Newt said, breaking Percival’s train of self-loathing thoughts. Percival looked up at him and his heart skipped a beat when he saw Newt’s awkward and sweet smile. “If you want me to come back that is, I don’t want to be a burden…”

Percival stood up and crossed the room, he brought up his hand and lifted Newt’s face so they would lock eyes. “Newt, you saved me, you are beautiful and kind and gentle and you give without taking and…” Percival swallowed the lump in his throat, looking and Newt’s tear-filled eyes and ecstatic smile. “You have been an amazing friend and I love you, more than as a friend, I hope that doesn’t make you uncomfortable…”

Newt grabbed Percival’s face between his hands and kissed him. They were both crying and clinging to each other like drowning men. When they moved up for air they pressed their foreheads together and smiled. 

“I didn’t want to leave you, but now I want to even less,” Newt whispered.

“Iceland, you say… what should I pack?”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this fic wasn't to horrible. Feedback would be greatly appreciated :)


End file.
